What makes someone want to become a councillor? The government has grappled for some time with how to make our representatives in local government more, well, representative of the way society is made up. But it has proved a particularly hard nut to crack.

Next week, the fifth census of councillors will be published by the Local Government Association and the Improvement and Development Agency. These two bodies have been carrying out a census of local authority councillors in England every other year since 1997, to provide a snapshot of the make-up of our local representatives. And the results this year are likely to provide little comfort for those who want to see greater change. Local councils in England are still dominated by fifty-something white men - and that fails to reflect the kind of society we all live in.

The results also demonstrate just how hard it is to alter the way society runs. It was in December 2007 that Dame Jane Roberts, the former leader of the London borough of Camden, reported as chair of the Councillors Commission on the "mutual incomprehension" that often exists between citizen and state. The commission called for a more effective and vibrant local democracy, and made a number of proposals about how this might come about.

It suggested 61 changes to local councils that it hoped would make authorities more transparent and attractive to the populace at large. They included lowering the voting age to 16, and creating "local government days", when elections for seats in a region would all be held on the same day.

But the wheels of government grind slow, and local councils remain stubbornly the same. Much more needs to be done, particularly on encouraging people to stand for election in the first place. Looking at candidates, as well as those who get elected, has proved a useful exercise, but when Michael Thrasher, professor of politics at Plymouth University, suggested, after his third survey of election candidates, that the way they are selected by political parties should change, he ran into the same brick wall as had Roberts: the political parties want to hang on to their role as recruiting sergeants for local authorities. In which case, said Thrasher, they need to start looking out more widely than simply within their own political networks.

This matters to us all as citizens, and it also matters to public managers, the non-elected officials who run our local services, and who have to lead local councils in partnership with elected councillors. Bringing in new and fresh perspectives is as important for officials as it is for councillors themselves.

Not enough women, not enough younger people, not enough black and minority ethnic representation. That's the truth of local government.

The representation of women at the highest levels of local government, in elected and unelected positions, remains horribly low. Only a third of councillors in England are women, and only 20% of local authority chief executives are women. Those figures are depressing enough, but a mere 15.7% of local authority leaders are women. And these figures are only inching forward: an increase of 1% in the number of female chief executives in 2008-09, compared to the previous year, is hardly progress.

Research from the Centre for Women & Democracy (CWD) points out that there are 129 authorities where either the leader of the council or the chief executive is female, including 10 in which both posts are held by women. This leaves 248 authorities (64%) in which there are no women in either leadership position. There are 175 authorities where the three most important posts - leader, deputy leader and chief executive - are all filled by men.

Particularly depressing is the finding that in the four new unitary authorities that come into existence this year, all the new council leaders and their deputies are men. These authorities replace 19 district councils and three shire counties, where four of the leaders - still not a large number - were women. In all, the CWD notes, the number of women leaders will fall this year from 59 to 55.

But what's to be done? Increased training and support for councillors may encourage more people to stand, but doing something about how candidates are chosen is an urgent and difficult issue. Thrasher's survey found that 98% of candidates were white, two-thirds were men, and almost two-thirds were 55 or over. Encouraging younger people into local government is one of the hardest tasks. For the moment, at least, the answer to what makes someone want to be a councillor remains the same: being a middle-aged white male.

• Jane Dudman is acting editor of the Guardian's Public magazine. More details on the census and the CWD research at tinyurl.com/73r78s and cfwd.org.uk